Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday April 08, 2010 @10:41PM
from the cloudy-today dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Having recently acquired an iPod Touch, DeviceGuru blogger Rick Lehrbaum soon found himself with an 80GB iPod paperweight knocking around and collecting dust. Then it hit him: why not use a Pogoplug as an iPod server, effectively filling his nifty new iPod Touch with 80GB of music whenever he has WiFi access? The how-to article at DeviceGuru.com explains how a Pogoplug and iPod Touch combined with free web services at pogoplug.com combine to form the 'PogoPod System.' It also introduces the Pogoplug's new UPnP support, and briefly reviews a couple of UPnP media-rendering iPhone and iPod Touch apps."

You forgot to mention that if you want to access the drive *outside* of your lan, its either a yearly or monthly rate of like 20 or 30 dollars a month. And you have to use their service to access the configuration of the device.

You might be right. If the thing was a "paperweight" like TFA claims, and now it works there must be some kind of magic going on. Have monster started selling unobtanium tipped USB cables with philosphers' stone insulation?

Or you could just buy a Sheevaplug [openplug.org] and save yourself the monthly fee for using the crap being pedaled in this "hack". Or if you really wanted to be a cheapskate just pick up a SFF PC for a little of nothing, since all it is gonna do is serve files a 733MHz will do just fine, slap Linux and a decent sized HDD in and you're good to go.

Seriously, does nobody read these things before they get posted anymore? I was hopped up expecting some cool hack, not some cheap ass ad for an overpriced POS. Note-plugging s

The very day that Apple announces that only their newest phones will support multitasking why here we have on/. an article pimping how having an otherwise useless iDevice is a good thing. I guess we know what folks are supposed to do with their old iPhones now.

Indeed. I was going to say that maybe they're just scraping the barrel for the obligitary daily Apple story, but we already have the Iphone story as you note, and there's the Ipad story. I guess now we get daily stories for each of Apple products.

Imagine, the Slashdot headlines of 2015:

* Boring DIY hacks for your old iPad.* Blog spots Apple ordering new parts, rumours of revolutionary magical new device that will change your life!* Announcement of a pre-announcement that Apple will soon announce a minor upd

I mean, isn't the whole point of having an iPod or whatever so you can listen to music wherever you are? I mean, at that point you could just use pandora or any media server (Mediatomb, playon, tversity, etc, etc), or any of the myriad online streaming radio stations.

Sure, this is cool. But not it's not like the guy hacked a 80GB SSD drive into an old iPod.

The guy's just plugging an external hard drive in to a minimalist Linux system (the early review versions are clearly SheevaPlug units with a sticker attached and some custom software) and accessing it from an iPod Touch. Whoop-dee-fucking-doo.

The post title implies something actually interesting like a way to hack more than the X GB of storage space Apple currently offers on to the iPod Touch platform, not "here's how to access a UPnP share from a WiFi connected handheld.

It's an iHack. Like a hack, but better more polished and easy for ordinary people to do.It's an innovative game changing method for safely hacking Apple's products in a magical way that will change the way we hack for ever.

What.. You expected wires and soldering irons and unofficial code and stuff? Eww.. He used a non Apple product.. What more do you want.Do you know how hard it is to open an iProduct? It could get SCRATCHED!!!!

And you know how the master gets when people try to do stuff they are not allo..

Hi, my name is Feverdream and I like to hack small devices to make them easier to use by the blind - like myself - since they are often cheaper than full fledged computer systems that have parts we non-sighted don't usually need or use. I recently forced the pogoplug guys to release some GPL code they tried to hide from the community; You can now see part of the the xce module source on the website, but we need your help getting the rest!

They still lock the system down, and the Adobe Apollo based server on the device that they use for their service does things under the hood that would make RMS blush. They did not even want to release the xce module source despite the fact that it is GPL, and I had to fight with them to release the part they did.. problem is its not the source that they released on the device, and they wont give that out. You can tell by comparing the timestamps in the tarball they released that the files were edited.

Not to mention, thy lock you out of updating the kernel... and that makes it very hard to add accessibility for the blind or otherwise disabled since this is not activated by default.

We need your help. Boycott them,. get the message out they they violate not only the terms of the GPL by refusing to release unmodified or edited source of the code they have already released to the public, but the spirit of it. Get the rest of the data on the http://www.plugapps.com/ forums!

1st: Don't buy that kind of devices. Get some generic ARM-based box off china. It's what this devices use anyway. You can find some nice 600mhz ARM + 128MB of RAM all-in-one boards that come with an SDK and all of the source plus many example apps for 30 dollars (FOB Shenzhen, China). There are even full embedded systems (with very similar specs) complete with case, power supply, remote, wifi card, etc. Ready to plug and get hacking for under 60 dollars (Again, price is FOB Shenzhen). Lots of fun at a great price. You can find retailers for all of this devices in most places around the world.

Another great hacking tool are the atom-based boards. There are all in one mini-atx mobos with dual core Atom processors (1.6ghz) for 80 dollars. Try the Intel or Foxconn models, they are very powerful and inexpensive.

If you are still mad about the GPL violators, try mailing Richard at rms@gnu.org, he reads and answers every mail, and he'll surely be more than glad to help you out and speak on your behalf, or direct you to the right person.

BTW: The account thing wasn't just to be a smartass. Many people just disregards most ACs posts, and it's impossible to keep in touch or get replies from ACs anyway. Also, this place has some very very elaborate trolls, you never, ever know;)

You can find some nice 600mhz ARM + 128MB of RAM all-in-one boards that come with an SDK and all of the source plus many example apps for 30 dollars (FOB Shenzhen, China). There are even full embedded systems (with very similar specs) complete with case, power supply, remote, wifi card, etc. Ready to plug and get hacking for under 60 dollars (Again, price is FOB Shenzhen). Lots of fun at a great price. You can find retailers for all of this devices in most places around the world.

Hi, can you post some links to someone who retails these devices? sounds interesting.

Again, I have no idea. I import them directly from China, and I'm not in the US, so I don't know what retailers you can find there.

But let me tell you, there are dozens of places in Shenzhen that produce this kind of boards. All of those prices are FOB China. Google for it, I'm sure there are importers and retailers of this stuff in the US. Most DVR systems are based on this board, specially the cheapest ones. Some AVTech systems that retail for 200 dollars are based on exactly the same boards I buy for 30.

I am not sure if I'm allowed to double post this, and I do not want to break the rules here now that I'm logged in now, but anyway yes I'm real, this is legit, and you can find more data here: http://plugapps.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=43 [plugapps.com] where I have a thread going about improving compatibility that has kind of morphed into other topics around this, including the threats we have gotten for simply requesting gpl source code.

Well, the "article" is a bit of disappointment, however I've been in the same situation and here is how I approach the problem (way more music then will fit on my 8GB touch or smartphone): I have a linux server (Dell Studio Hybrid running Gentoo) that I always leave on which has a copy of my music repository. On it I run Music Player Daemon (MPD) with Icecast as one of the outputs. I connect to MPD via a simple web client (there are several: http://mpd.wikia.com/wiki/Clients [wikia.com]) from my touch, build my playlist, then point Safari to my Icecast server's IP/port which opens the media player and I can listen to MPD anywhere I have WiFi. I'm not sure what the minimum bandwidth required is, but even my smartphones (previously Samsung Saga on WM 6.1, now Droid Eris running 2.1) work with this system. For the record I used TCPMP on WM 6.1 (Windows Media Player mobile worked too, but that app is horrible) and now use I use A Online Radio for the Droid (oddly enough, the built in media player on Android doesn't do streams and it's touch to find an Android streaming client that let's you specify any address/port you want).

sounds horribly complicatedhave you tried ampache? works great as a drop in solution if you have a working LAMP stack (sounds like you do).Though not sure how well it would work on a phone given its a full web-ui.

to be honest you'll prob get nicer interface/functionality running itunes in a VM and then pointing itunes on your touch/iphone to it, I know people who swear by this functionality (but they also live in unlimited 3G data places lol). Not sure about the NAT/firewall port specifics but I'm sure the

This is actually a really good idea. I have an Ampache server set up on a plug computer (not pogo plug, but one of the original Marvell ones), and there is an Ampache application for the iPhone and iPod named iAmpache. It works pretty well, but is still being improved. It bet it'll be a much better media interface than what he's got going now!

yeah i'll have to check it out. when I finally cave and get an iphone lol.the itunes to iphone seamless library interface is the main plus, if iampache can come close its a winner since my linux server is far too pitiful for a VM for itunes (its an old thinkpad).

Haha, I know what you mean-- while I set up the Ampache server (it was for my own benefit; I use it via a web browser), I don't actually own an iPhone or iPod, so I tested it on my brother's. I'm resisting!

Yes, apparently it is; when I bought mine about 8 months ago it came in 8GB, 16GB and 32GB flavours; now it comes in 8GB, 32GB and 64GB [apple.com] flavours. Sucks a little, the 32GB one is now only about £20 more than I paid for the 16GB one. Ain't tech great?

Lame, 5 years ago I had an 80GB Windows Mobile PDA, 2 years ago I DIY upgraded it to a 1.5TB Windows Mobile PDA and I have 160GB of FLAC audio wherever I go......if I have WiFi, seeing as the 1.5TB is on my server. This is dumb, you can access a server with a client device, that doesn't mean the client has all the features of the server, it means that it can access them via a connection (and if you try to use your WiFi anywhere outside of your LAN, most likely it will be too slow to utilize the 80GB, you

I imagine this isn't as useful when your workplace's new 802.11n WiFi throttles access to the Internet to a paltry 20 KB/s (ssh SOCKS proxy-tunnel to LAN brings it up only to 90 KB/s after first day). What I need is a stealth waterproof solar-powered WiFi repeater to bring the fast food restaurant's WiFi from across the street into the building.

As far as I can tell you still can't listen to more than one song at a time--you've still got to navigate, click on a song, navigate more, click on another, etc. So you can't, say, easily listen to a whole album. (Correct me if I'm wrong but the two UPnP apps look very limited.) If that's all you're going to do, you may as well save your money and use this [pixelcity.com] (share through Apache) or this [google.com] (install a custom (but open-source) service.)

This can be done with a standard web server. Simply set up a web server that makes all your music available on your network, then point your iPod Touch to it. Compatible music files will play in "Quicktime".

Now that I've been given the option to disable the one surprisingly unobtrusive advert on your page (which I kept on anyways), all I have to put up with for advertising is the increasing amount of plug-stories! Thanks!

"Having recently acquired an iPod Touch, DeviceGuru blogger Rick Lehrbaum soon found himself with an 80GB iPod paperweight knocking around and collecting dust. Then it hit him: Why not earn some cash by getting a lame article published on/.!"

You can use a standard external hard drive and a home router with network store support then VPN into your home network.
You can use Pandora
You can use Grooveshark
You can use 1 million other free music streaming services available.
For fair disclosure, I don't own an iPod, iPad, or any other iShit and I don't purport to know exactly how they work but I would think any of those options previously mentioned would be better than this ad masquerading as a story.

There's already an app that does the same thing with your (Windows/Mac/Linux) PC called Simplify Media [simplifymedia.com] that this seems to. Essentially, it scans your music directory (or iTunes/Rhythmbox library if you want) on each computer the client runs, and lets you share them (directly through iTunes/Rhythmbox's own shared library front-end) on any other computer the client runs on. It also lets you add up to 30 "friends" to share with as well. Photos can also be shared (using iPhoto's events/faces/locations features

The Pogoplug website has a page [pogoplug.com] of the latest tweets featuring their name.
The latest flood of tweets are people linking to the story. They don't seem to be linking to DeviceGuru, though. They're linking here.
If you REALLY want to tell people how bad it is, and have it display on their website, Twitter is your friend...
(just sayin')

Its a $130 device that you plug a usb drive into to have internet access to it. Not really hacking...now if the guy bought a cheap wireless router, ran openwrt on it and hooked this to usb drive, then it would be cool. It would be even cooler if he were to get a wireless router that he had to hack to get usb ports on in the first place instead of using one that was designed with usb device connection capability, but either one would be much cooler than this crap.